A Stock Show story: We were in my in-laws’ photo album in 1963 — 40 years before we met
Published Dec. 25, 2011.
I found my parents the other day.
They were at my in-laws’. And they’ve been there for years.
This is where the story gets complicated. My father died in 1985, my mother in 1993.
But my in-laws were sorting old snapshots when one caught my eye.
On the back page of a lime-green 1960s album, two girls looked up from a candid pic on the Stock Show midway.
I recognized a sister-in-law, Cathryn Seymour Dorsey.
But the guy in the background looked familiar.
Those horn-rimmed glasses — and big ears — it looked a little bit like Bud Kennedy, the former Bray (Oklahoma) farm boy who moved to Fort Worth after cooking battlefield meals with the 45th Infantry Division in World War II.
He worked in a bag-and-box factory. And in 1955, he and his wife wrote a $600 check to adopt a newborn boy.
No way, I thought.
I didn’t even say anything.
Finally, I said: “Huh. This guy over here sort of looks like my father.”
Then I saw the woman in the background shuffling past the Will Rogers Coliseum door.
She looked even more like Liona B. Kennedy, the Virginia mountain girl who moved to Fort Worth after World War II.
She worked stitching saddles at Leddy’s in the Stockyards while she tracked down a certain Army mess cook.
I took a deep breath.
“And,” I said — “this might be my mother.”
Bea Watson, my mother-in-law, started piecing together what she knew about her daughter’s photo.
Cathy Seymour was at the Stock Show with a friend, Margo Kyger. They bought the photo from a roaming photographer.
It had been in the family album since that day about 1964.
Then I saw the shoes.
Behind Cathy, a child in a hooded coat and jeans is walking in suede Hush Puppies.
Everybody at South Hi Mount Elementary teased me about my shoes.
I’ve written about Bud and Liona Kennedy before, but not for years.
They adopted me, but they’re the only parents I’ve ever known.
They had been married 10 years when they bought a newborn boy advertised for adoption in a Star-Telegram classified ad.
(We always say classified ads get results.)
We buried my mother in 1993, late on a snowy December afternoon two days before Christmas.
I didn’t meet Shelly Seymour until 2005.
My parents never met Shelly Seymour or my in-laws.
Yet our photo was in their album nearly 40 years before we met.
This story was originally published December 24, 2011 at 8:13 PM with the headline "A Stock Show story: We were in my in-laws’ photo album in 1963 — 40 years before we met."
